Screen-use options: These files are created for viewing on your monitor

ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

John C. Mather, a senior astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist
for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize.

Mather shares the prize with George F. Smoot, a professor of physics at the University of California at
Berkeley, for work that helped solidify the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. Mather and
Smoot were members of a science team that used NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)
satellite to measure the diffuse microwave background radiation, which is considered a relic of the Big Bang.

The COBE satellite was launched on Nov. 18, 1989, and involved more than 1,000 researchers, engineers,
and scientists.

COBE team member Michael Hauser, deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said: "I was
surprised and delighted to learn of the award of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics to John Mather and George
Smoot for their discoveries of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background
radiation with NASA's COBE satellite. As a member of the COBE science team, I take great pride in this
recognition of the COBE contribution to cosmological research."

This is the second award in several months that has acknowledged the work of the COBE science team.
In August, the COBE team was awarded the Peter Gruber Foundation's 2006 Cosmology Prize. The annual
Gruber Prize, co-sponsored by the International Astronomical Union, recognizes those who have contributed
fundamental advances in the field of cosmology.

When the JWST is launched in 2013, it will probe some of the earliest stars in the galaxy that were born
after the Big Bang. JWST will look deep into the cosmos to probe some of the earliest stars. The spacecraft
will search for extrasolar planets and will explore the birth and death of stars and the birth and evolution of
galaxies.